


Fate

by sighbug



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-02
Updated: 2015-08-02
Packaged: 2018-04-12 12:15:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4478909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sighbug/pseuds/sighbug
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>my first work of fiction lol comments/criticisms are welcome</p>
    </blockquote>





	Fate

**Author's Note:**

> my first work of fiction lol comments/criticisms are welcome

She can feel someone’s presence before she’s even turned around. There’s another step and then she knows—it’s him. She’s heard that footstep everyday of her existence. The sound of his footsteps is one of the first things she remembers. They remind her of failure. And God dammit, she should’ve known as soon as she got to Earth that this is where she was going to be dropped, she should’ve guessed, because of course she’d end up near him. Of course she would. She recognizes the park; he used to play here when he was younger, but stopped coming when he was around nine or so, right after his brother died. He only came around now to get away from home and to smoke.

She doesn’t want to turn around; she doesn’t want to face him, she can’t. She looks up at the sky and prays that she’ll evaporate back into the galaxy. She doesn’t. He was close now, too close for comfort. She can smell his coconut conditioner and the faint weed when the breeze blows. She sighs because it smells like home.

“Hey,” comes the rough voice from behind her.  Fuck.

She thinks that maybe if she doesn’t turn around, if she doesn’t respond and just ignores him, that maybe he’d walk away.

  She turns around anyway. It’s different this way, she’s seen him a million times before, but it’s different. She grazes her eyes over his body and she can’t explain it, but he feels real now. And so does she. She feels like she’s on fire, but she’s freezing cold.

“Hello,” her voice is shaky and her hair whips her in the face as the storm clouds near them. She shades her grey eyes from his face; carefully avoiding them meeting.

“You’re new here, right? To the neighborhood, I mean,” he takes one white earphones out of his ear and lets it fall next to his waist.

She doesn’t know why, but she nods. _Stupid,_ she thinks _, why did I do that?_ She should just leave before it’s too late.

“I’m Noel. Harrington,” she wants to laugh. She knows that, but God, it hears so good to hear him say it aloud. She almost says, “I know”, _almost_ , but then he continues, “I live down the street,” he points to the left with his long finger and kind of jerks his head in the same direction. The wind makes his brown hair messy and out of place and he’s got a pimple on his chin that he’s obviously been picking at and the glare of the dying streetlight kind of washes him out a bit. He’s never looked more beautiful.

She just nods. God. She should say something! She knows she should but she can’t remember how to open her mouth.

“Um. What’s your name?” He puts his hands into his hoodie pockets. He coughs once.

 _Shit, shit, shit._ She should’ve known he was going to ask her this.  She panics.

“Fate,” she blurts, “Orion. Fate Orion.”

She can practically feel the universe laughing at her.

He nods at her, and chews his gum a bit too loudly. His mother always scolds him for this.

“Are you going to start at Keller when break is over?”  He asks her. Keller is his high school, he says that he hates it, but he doesn't, not really. Noel won't admit it anyone, not even himself, but he’s scared to leave. Fate knows, though, knows better than everyone that when he’s driving to school in his dad’s black 1972 Mustang and his music is blasting and turns to whichever friend he’s driving that day and says, “I can’t wait to get out of here,” he’s lying. Not completely of course, Noel doesn’t like to lie, but it’s not the full truth either. It’s not that he doesn’t want to leave Hollow Creek, because he does, or at least a part of him does, but he likes being near his brother. 

She should say no and then leave, so he’ll forget that he ever met some weird pale girl and can continue on with his life. She should say no, but she doesn’t, of course she doesn’t.

“Yeah. I’m a junior,” she has no idea what grade she would be in, she just says that because so is Noel.

"Same,” Noel says, “so Fate, tell me, what are you doing at a park at, “he takes his hand out of his pocket, the one holding his phone, and glances down, “2:18 AM on Christmas Eve? Or Christmas, I guess.”  

“I’m Jewish!” _Smooth, Fate, real smooth._ Noel nods slowly. “I, um, guess I just needed some air,” she’s trying to act human and she doesn’t know if its working or not, but Noel nods again, more sure this time, like he accepts her answer, and she relaxes a little bit.

“Same,” Noel says again, ”My family’s pretty fucking insane.” He shakes his head, and looks up, but there aren’t any stars out tonight, the whole sky was covered with a sheet of threatening grey clouds. She doesn’t look up; she’s seen the sky plenty of times. She just looks at him, instead. Even if she hadn’t smelled the weed earlier, she still would’ve known that he was high. Noel doesn’t talk about his family much, not to anyone, especially not strangers in the park.

And then he looks at her just as she's looking at him and if she didn’t know any better she’d say that it was love at first sight, because all of a sudden she feels her veins stop pumping blood and her heart stops beating and every muscle in her body goes taut, just for a millisecond, but that’s all it took. She’s not quite sure how long they’re staring at each other, it could have been a second or it could’ve been a lifetime, she doesn’t really care, if she’s being honest, because all she wants to do for the rest of her existence is hold his gaze.

She shivers, not because she’s cold, but because her body doesn’t know what else do. Noel notices, and his drops his eyes from hers and his thick eyebrows knit together as his eyes scale down her body. She’s wearing nothing but a simple white dress. He bites the inside of his cheek and frowns a little bit.

“You must be cold, here-- take my hoodie.” Fate begins to object just as Noel starts to drag his sweatshirt up his torso and when his _Led Zeppelin_ t-shirt rides up his slender stomach Fate’s protests die in her throat. It isn’t anything that she hasn’t seen before, but again, it’s different this time.

He tries hands it to her, but she shakes her head, and keeps her arms crossed in front of her.

“No, seriously, I insist, take it” Noel says, firmer this time, and pushes it towards her, “just give it back to me when we get back to school. It’s no big deal.”

She takes it even though she knows she shouldn’t. She’s careful not to let their fingers touch. She slips it over her shoulders and she can feel Noel boring his eyes into her, but she’s careful not to look back at him again.

“Thank you,” she mumbles quietly, not meeting his eyes, and wraps her arms back around herself.

“Well, I should probably head back now. Y’know. It’s late,” Fate nods, “I’ll, um, I’ll, uh, see you later then,” she nods again, “It was nice to meet you, Fate,” Noel chuckles a bit to himself and she can’t help but blushing. She didn’t even know that Star Souls _could_ blush. He turns around and puts his headphone back into his ear and starts walking. He doesn’t look back at her at all, which is good, because she’s just standing there staring at him, like an idiot, trying to wrap her mind around the fact that its possible for someone to be as beautiful as Noel.

Once he’s far enough away to be out of her gaze, Fate turns around and stares at the tree where Noel and Luck used to play with their toy trucks. She closes her eyes and tries to return home, but when she opens them again, she’s still standing underneath that damned Hickory. She doesn’t understand why she isn’t going back. When she had come to Earth before all she had to do was shut her eyes and think about home and then she was back in the galaxy. But now, when Fate closes her eyes, nothing comes to her mind save for the memories of little five-year old blonde Luck, the spitting image of the twins’ father, playing quietly with his fire truck, while Noel, who took his mother’s Pakistani genes, was running around with his trucks in the air yelling unintelligible sounds and words. Noel and Luck didn’t look like brothers, certainly not like twins, but they had the same eyes. That’s how you could tell; it was all through the eyes. They both had the deep brown eyes that were miles deep and twinkled in every light. They shared the same eyes that dragged you in and wouldn’t release you until you explored every pool of dark chocolate and black coffee and cedar wood; the same eyes that could have inspired the saying that the eyes are the windows to the soul.

After hours of staring at that damned tree, Fate comes to the conclusion that she was plopped down in Hollow Creek, Missouri as some sort of punishment. You see, it is the duty a star soul, like her, to guide two human souls together, to make fate happen, to progress destiny. And its not that Fate has failed to bring Noel to his soul mate, though that’s true too, its that Fate cannot _find_ Noel’s soul mate. It is as though he or she doesn’t exist. Star Souls are supposed to be connected with two souls on Earth, and those two souls are what are known as soul mates. For Fate and Noel, it was different; it’s always been different. Fate only felt his soul. Just his. She thought at first that Noel’s soul mate just hadn’t been born yet, but she learned later that Star Souls could always feel the other soul, no matter if the soul has inhabited a human yet or not. She asked one of the older Star Souls that if after one of the human soul mates died they could still feel the deceased soul. The old Star Soul told her that souls do not die. And its not like Fate hasn’t scoured the Earth for Noel’s soul mate, because she has. But she couldn’t find it anywhere. She failed him.

Coming down to Earth is not supposed to happen like this, which is one reason why she thinks the universe is penalizing her. Star Souls come down to Earth on very rare occasions when one of their humans is in dire need of help and it’s something that Star Souls that can’t change from the above. Star Souls have very few chances to come down to Earth. There are stories of Star Souls that went down to Earth one too many times and disintegrated into nothing but star dust when they tried to return to the galaxy. Fate’s been down only once before. She hopes that when she returns to the galaxy this won’t count as her one of her Earth visits.

 _I didn’t mean to do this,_ she thinks. _I didn’t plan this!_

She hopes that the universe is listening.  Humans aren’t supposed to see the physical depiction of their Star Soul, and Star Souls are are strictly forbidden from direct communication with their human. She’s fairly certain that accepting a sweatshirt from her human is included in the communication rule. Fate tries not to worry; she tries to convince herself that the universe will understand that this was just some massive fluke and that her karma will not come back to haunt her. She feels an immense feeling of sadness rush over her right when she’s about to fall asleep.  

“I’m sorry I failed you,” she whispers into the air, feeling her words get swept up with the cool wind. She hopes that somehow Noel’s soul will forgive her for being unable to cure his loneliness.

When she awakes the next morning, she is lying beneath the old Hickory.  


End file.
